Osborne Burl Bowl

A stranger contacted me with a request to sculpt a bowl from a sugar maple burl that he acquired as a retirement gift. This burl was huge, nearly 2 feet in diameter, and completely surrounded the 8" diameter trunk on which it grew. It was its large size that led to my being asked to sculpt the bowl, since the first woodturner that Mr. Osborne contacted said it was too big and heavy for his lathe.

The burl had many cavities and crevices, which I could probe with a stiff wire, and I found that many of them formed a labyrinth completely through the burl. I consulted several of my woodturner friends and asked for advice on how to successfully locate a "bowl" amongst all the crevices and cavities. The advice I got was "good luck." I showed the Osbornes some of my abstract sculptures that were similar to what I could sculpt from the burl, but they preferred to have a centerpiece bowl. In the end, we agreed that I would carve the largest bowl that I could in exchange for the remainder of the burl, with which I could do as I pleased. It took a lot of examination and probing to find the most sound portion of the burl with which to make a bowl with the minimum chance of major pieces breaking free during thinning. As it turned out, I was lucky in selecting the section to carve and had no unforeseen problems, but as you can see from the images, I had to sculpt around several major defects in the burl---an option not available to one turning on a lathe.

Below are several images, starting with the burl as I received it from the Osbornes, the initial cut from the burl, and two intermediate stages. When polished and finished with polyurethane, the bowl is spectacular. Needless to say, the Osbornes were very pleased with the result.